


Pull

by todisturbtheuniverse



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Drunkenness, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, TW: suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-17
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-01-19 19:22:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1481146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thane dies. Shepard grieves. Garrus is a good friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pull

**Author's Note:**

> General angst warning, and TW for vague allusions to suicidal thoughts. During ME3. Obviously.

Garrus finds her on the floor of the bar, bottle dangling in loose fingers.

She doesn’t see him at first. Her eyes are closed; she breathes evenly, heavy. He expected a wreck, and truth be told, this is better than what he imagined. She still smells like she’s been in a fire. There’s dust in her hair. Only her hands are clean, carefully washed, no residue beneath her nails.

From the wrist up, dried blood makes patterns on her skin.

"Shepard," he prompts, as gently as he dares.

Her eyes open instantly, cross briefly, and refocus. She stares up at him, her face perfectly blank, and lifts the bottle to her lips before thrusting it up at him. He takes it before she gets the chance to drop it.

"You only just got here," she says. Her lip twitches feebly—an attempt at the crooked smile he knows so well. "I’m already under the bar."

"You got a headstart," he offers.

Her lip doesn’t twitch again. That dead look is back in her eyes—like all the fish she’s accidentally killed over the years, but a thousand times worse. He looks away, and that’s when he notices the open shutter.

She never leaves the shutter open. He watched her develop the habit himself, after Cerberus brought her back. Every time she enters Port Observation, she crosses the room with her eyes on the floor, punches the button, and looks away for good measure while the shutter closes.

"Garrus," she says. She sighs, and she makes it sound like she’ll never breathe in again. "I’m so tired."

"I know." He reaches down to her. "Just a little longer, Shepard."

She lets him help her up. Her grief makes her small—shoulders slumped, eyes glassy, spine gone slack.

"Maybe getting the blood off would help," he suggests.

"You’re just trying to get me sober," she mutters. Mulishly, if he isn’t mistaken. She gets like this when she drinks too much. "Some friend you are."

"You’ll thank me in the morning."

"I won’t."

"Shepard—"

"How could he do this?" Her voice quivers. Her lips twist. She isn’t pretty when she cries, and he’s only seen her cry once before. It’s honest and raw and awful to look at. "How could he—I can’t—I won’t—"

"He wouldn’t have gone if he’d had any choice." Gently, carefully, he wraps his hands around her shoulders. They heave beneath his grasp. She draws breath like it’s killing her. "You know that."

"It doesn’t help," she whispers. "He’s still gone, and I’m. I’m so tired. I don’t want to dream about h-him, too, but I’m so tired. I just want. To sleep."

She presses her forehead to his chest, hiding her face. Funny, how short she seems like this. Until this moment she has been a mountain, and now she’s just a person, crumpled and beaten.

She cries, and cries, and cries, and he rests his chin on top of her head, keeping one eye on the window. His paranoia is unreasonable. The void doesn’t have any pull on  _him_. But on  _her_ _._..

She pulls back, rubs at her eyes, and looks at the window and the pinpricks of light in the space beyond.

"I remember it so clearly." Her voice is ragged. "Just a series of decisions. Made them all too quick to really think about it until it was happening. And then—dying was so fast. It was so much easier than this."

"Lucky for you, then, that you’ll get to do it twice," he tells her.

"Sorry," she mutters, not looking at him. "I’m drunk. Please leave before I embarrass myself more. Like that’s even possible."

"I thought that was the point of this friendship," he reminds her. "We do stupid things in front of each other, so no one else has to suffer."

She hacks out a laugh. He winces.

"Thanks, Garrus," she says.

"No problem. Now, will you get in the elevator, or do I have to carry you? That will be even more embarrassing.”

"I’m going," she grumbles.

He puts an arm around her shoulders to steer her. “Believe it when I see it,” he says.

He presses the button for the shutter on their way out.


End file.
